Palmer, Robert C. 1947- (Robert Charles Palmer)

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Palmer, Robert C. 1947- (Robert Charles Palmer)

PERSONAL:

Born February 8, 1947, in Long Beach, CA; son of Albert F. (a logger) and Josephine (a teaching assistant) Palmer; married Patricia Rochford (a social worker), December 18, 1971; children: Edward, Elspeth. Education: Attended Mount Angel Seminary College, 1965-67 and 1968-69; University of Oregon, B.A., 1970; University of Iowa, M.A., 1971, Ph.D., 1977.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Houston, 100 Law Center, Houston, TX 77204. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

City University of New York, New York, NY, Andrew W. Mellow fellow in humanities, 1977-78; University of Alberta, Edmonton, Izaak W. Killam Scholar in history, 1978-79; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, junior fellow, 1979-82, visiting assistant professor of history and lecturer in law, 1982-83; College of William and Mary, Marshall-Wythe School of Law, Williamburg, VA, Adler fellow of the Institute for the Bill of Rights and assistant professor of law, 1983-85, associate professor of law, 1985-87; University of Houston, Houston, TX, Cullen Professor of History and Law, 1987—.

MEMBER:

American Historical Association, American Society of Legal History, Selden Society, Phi Beta Kapa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

American Bar Foundation fellow in legal history, 1976-77.

WRITINGS:

The Country Courts of Medieval England, 1150-1350, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1982.

The Whilton Dispute, 1264-1380: A Social-Legal Study of Dispute Settlement in Medieval England, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1984.

(With William E. Nelson) Liberty and Community: Constitution and Rights in the Early American Republic, Oceana Publications (New York, NY), 1987.

English Law in the Age of the Black Death, 1348-1381: A Transformation of Governance and Law, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 1993.

Selling the Church: The English Parish in Law, Commerce, and Religion, 1350-1550, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 2002.

Contributor of articles to history and law journals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Robert C. Palmer is a professor of law whose area of expertise lies in medieval English law. He is the author of such books as The Country Courts of Medieval England, 1150-1350, English Law in the Age of the Black Death, 1348-1381: A Transformation of Governance and Law, and Selling the Church: The English Parish in Law, Commerce, and Religion, 1350-1550. In English Law in the Age of the Black Death, 1348-1381, Palmer explores how laws in medieval England were shaped by the bubonic plague. Palmer particularly focuses on the Ordinance and Statute of Labourers, which was passed during this period. The ordinance held both the upper classes and the lower classes to more stringent guidelines in honoring contracts. The upper classes were to be held accountable for issuance and payment, and the lower classes were held to greater account for defaulting on labor or on ethical grounds. According to W.M. Omrod, writing in the English Historical Review: "The cumulative result of these developments was to turn the structure of royal justice into the principal mechanism of social control and create a government not of ‘innate’ but of ‘inherent’ authority: that is, one in which power was exercised not by virtue of individual rights but by the mandate of the state." Overall, Omrod found the book to be a "provocative and demanding study." Seconding this opinion, Michigan Law Review contributor Daniel B. Kosove stated that the "book is an extraordinarily cohesive and logical account." Kosove concluded: "Readers, especially those with an interest in medieval history, should thoroughly enjoy the fruits of Palmer's labors."

Palmer's Selling the Church looks at how the state sought to control church business, specifically regarding the leasing of land and parishes. Palmer additionally examines how the laws regarding church finances put into effect from 1350 to 1550 had unintended consequences, such as changing the interactions between clergy and parishioners. Church History critic D.A. Postles summarized the work in the following terms: "The main argument perhaps runs like this: the management of the temporalities of parish churches in the later Middle Ages … affected the relationship between clergy and parishioners … and resulted in instability because of the difficulty of separating spiritualities and temporalities." To this end, Palmer specifically focuses on the statutes that were passed in 1529, giving a background history of the laws and theories that led up to this point. Although some critics did not necessarily agree with all of Palmer's assertions, most found the book to be a valuable scholarly endeavor. Albion contributor Christopher Harper-Bill stated: "All in all, this book represents an excellent analysis of an important aspect of legal history but the wider conclusions are very much open to debate." Hugh Thomas, writing in Journal of Church and State, found that "Palmer adds a very important dimension to the history of the English Reformation. He also charts some very important changes, which other historians of the period will need to take quite seriously."

Palmer told CA: "My formative years were spent at Mount Angel Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in St. Benedict, Oregon. I received my high school education there with a heavy emphasis on languages (Latin, Russian, and Greek). Thereafter I remained at St. Benedict for college (Mount Angel Seminary College) pursuing the only major then available there: philosophy. I then entered the monastery as a novice monk, taking the compulsory nonacademic year of training. During that year I worked on an English translation of the Regula Magistri. My work motivated the project that thereafter was taken to publication. I left the monastery in May 1969, a conscientious objector to warfare and determined also on an academic career in history.

"After receiving my Ph.D., I received a series of postdoctoral fellowships, while applying for more than sixty academic positions in early European history unsuccessfully. These fellowships allowed me not only to remain in academia, but also to complete my first two books. In my seventh year in the academic job market, I was hired as the Adler fellow of the newly endowed Institute for the Bill of Rights in the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary. The position was designed to promote my career, with only limited teaching duties and responsibilities restricted to legal history.

"Much of my career has been fortuitous. My decision to apply to the University of Iowa was made while I was thinking about studying modern German history; my commitment to early legal history derived from working with Donald Sutherland after I arrived at Iowa. Similarly, my original dissertation topic concerned the history of forms of pleading; it was in the course of that research that I happened across the documents that became my first two books. Both of those books thus began by chance discoveries that I pursued at first as tangents before finding that they could make monographs. I have not yet executed a research project rationally designed from the outset.

"My current intellectual interests are derived from the work of S.F.C. Milsom, which I am modifying and expanding. They relate to the interaction of social morality and rules of law; that work allows a complete revaluation of early English constitutional and legal history and permits more systematic analysis of regulation, bureaucratic action, and legal change."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Albion, June 22, 2004, Christopher Harper-Bill, review of Selling the Church: The English Parish in Law, Commerce, and Religion, 1350-1550, p. 286.

Catholic Historical Review, July 1, 2003, Joseph Biancalana, review of Selling the Church, p. 551.

Church History, March 1, 2005, D.A. Postles, review of Selling the Church, p. 155.

English Historical Review, September 1, 1994, W.M. Ormrod, review of English Law in the Age of the Black Death, 1348-1381: A Transformation of Governance and Law, p. 962.

Journal of Church and State, June 22, 2003, Hugh Thomas, review of Selling the Church, p. 597.

Michigan Law Review, May 1, 1995, Daniel B. Kosove, review of English Law in the Age of the Black Death, 1348-1381, p. 1768.

Times Literary Supplement, October 29, 1982, review of The Country Courts of Medieval England, 1150-1350, p. 1199.